On 7/3/2023 6:53 PM, Jeff Zeitlin - editor at freelancetraveller.com
(via tml list) wrote:
> I'm sure that many people here have read some favorite SF and thought "that
> could be a good Traveller adventure". I don't think, however, that I've
> ever actually encountered an adventure - or even a background - that was
> recognizeably lifted from something I'd read.
>
> So, I ask out of curiosity:
>
> Have you ever lifted a plot out of SF and run it as a Traveller adventure,
> or played as a player in one that your referee did so? If so, what was the
> original SF story, did it work well, did you enjoy it, ...?
>
> (If it was a merchant plot, feel free to write a full AAR for the next
> issue of Freelance Traveller!)
In the decades that I've GM'd Traveller, I've always pulled bits and
pieces from various Sci-Fi literature and video as inspiration for this
or that in the games. However, the one time I really went all-in was
when the characters misjumped to a world that, while it was in the
Solomani Rim, didn't appear on any star charts. Back during the late
2nd Imperium, the world was claimed by a corporation that focused on
bleeding edge computer technology, AI, and cybernetics among other
things. Their goal was to use the world as a showcase of technology and
decided to turn the main continent into a completely immersive amusement
part that recreated the 15th through late 19th centuries of Earth,
specifically Europe and Eastern Europe. Into this environment all the
"monsters" of legend were created as robotic facsimiles of the "real"
thing. The entire thing was pretty much self perpetuating, with the
human employees being there as little more than caretakers with other
human settlers filling out the "living history" aspect of the towns and
villages.
Each decade saw the development of ever more realistic and advanced
"monsters" until the local tech level was, with respect to
computers/robotics, TL 16 verging on TL 17. This is when the Second
Imperium started to stumble and within a century, all traffic to the
world had ceased. A couple more centuries and the memory of the "outer
worlds" was nothing more than a myth, a hope of the people who were now
living in a world with monsters.
By the time the characters arrived about 1110 or so, the monsters were
almost indistinguishable their human population and had truly become the
creatures of legend that they were originally designed to represent.
Vampires, werewolves, witches, demons, elves, even Baba Yaga, among
others, were represented. All of them payed fealty to the Overlord who
gave them "life".
Overlord was the AI that ran the production complex that manufactured
and repaired the denizens and generally ran the planet. It was, in a
way, the biggest flag in an eternal game of capture the flag by the more
powerful monsters, because whoever controlled Overlord, they believed,
would control the world.
Into this come the characters. They thought it was quaint that the
locals were battening down the hatches because tonight was the Night of
the Dragon. Silly superstitious peasants, was one one of the players
commented. There's no such thing as dragons. Later that evening as
they sent two NPC crew members back to the ship they saw a dragon
fireblast the NPCs in their Air/Raft...they became believers.
Thus started what became an eight month campaign every Sunday to find
out what was going on and how to get off the planet.
The planet was heavily based on David Bischoff's "Nightworld" and
"Vampires of Nightworld" books and once the players realized that this
wasn't a fever induced hallucination, had a lot of fun. Though the
dragon with the plasma gun breath weapon always made them find cover!
--
Kurt Feltenberger
xxxxxx@thepaw.org/xxxxxx@yahoo.com
“Before today, I was scared to live, after today, I'm scared I'm not living enough." - Me
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